A Woman by the Woman herself

The novel Una Donna [A Woman] by Sibilla Aleramo is an autobiography about Rina Faccio’s second identity, Sibilla Aleramo herself. Sibilla Aleramo loved and admired her father deeply and failed to see any faults in him in her youthful days. She looked up to him and gave him so much respect that it seemed there was hardly enough respect left over to give her “sick” (Aleramo, 19) and miserable mother who also seemed to crumble under her fathers power. Her mother was the exact opposite of her father in her eyes, “melancholy and weak” (19) because she was never able to advertise her own opinion; she just broke down in tears.

Sibilla’s dad hires her to work in his factory as his way of “trying to compensate me [her] for the education he had brought to an end” (15). At age 15, Sibilla is raped by a fellow worker and married off to the rapist. She finds herself in a similar situation to her mother – stuck in a loveless marriage, where true feelings were suppressed, with a controlling husband. She said “My husband, with typical lack of curiosity, was satisfied by my outward calm and my increasing submissiveness” (56-57). She then begun to understand the “grim warning” (56) her mother had served in previous years. Consequently, from her life experiences, Sibilla develops a sense of independence and opinion which she expresses in her writing. Unlike her mother, she finds an outlet to freedom of her mind which prevents her from the mental degradation her mother faced.